


I Was A Wasteland

by sssouthsideserpentine



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, jughead is a tortured writer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:54:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23167324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sssouthsideserpentine/pseuds/sssouthsideserpentine
Summary: To be a great writer, Jughead does whatever it takes to evoke the Greats that came before him…Inspired by the daly prompt in the @/southsidearchive discord!
Relationships: Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones
Kudos: 4





	I Was A Wasteland

The city ruined him. It made him jaded, as if he needed any more of a reason to be lacking in enthusiasm. It gave him a reason to fade away into the shadows, to revel in the anonymity. No one knew him, or his family, they couldn’t judge him from where he came from, or the things he had to do to keep himself afloat. Everyone said that New York was the perfect place for a writer, that it was the perfect place for someone like Jughead Jones. And it was…for a while. He finished his first novel right before his nineteenth birthday; a chronicle of Riverdale, the murder of Jason Blossom, the madness that no one expected to ensue in the “Town with Pep!” The publishing companies started rolling in the emails after seeing his story gaining some traction in a literary journal from his college. Jughead didn’t seek out a literary agent, but she found him. Lodge Publishing Works had become a hot-spot for up and coming true crime novelists, fore-fronted by a persistent brunette who decided that her Old Money should be spent on the little people, the ones who were full of untapped potential. That’s what she called Jughead, untapped potential. 

His first novel got rave reviews, compared the small-town boy to the likeness of Steven King and HP Lovecraft, the authors that Jughead took so much of his inspiration from inherently in his youth. He got a few months to revel in the glory before the requests for a follow up novel started to get to him…where was he supposed to go from here? So he started paying for his inspiration, it was a lot easier now that he wasn’t some poor kid from the Southside of a small town, growing up below the poverty line. Veronica was basically handing him checks, telling him that what he was doing was perfectly fine, promising that all of the greats did it:

For Jack Kerouac it was benzedrine, used to fuel his writing over the three-week period it took him to write On the Road. Hunter S. Thompson kept to a tight schedule — wake up at 3pm, cocaine by 3:45, first cup of coffee at 4. Intermittent bursts of cocaine usage from then until 5:45, a little bit of weed to take the edge off at 6…and so on. John Keats was lost in an opium daydream, Aldous Huxley wrote _The Doors of Perception_ while taking liberal amounts of LSD and mescaline. 

**But then there was Jughead Jones.** When he wrote the first chapter of his book, he hadn’t slept in three days. He was waiting for the hallucinations to kick in; waiting to see the demons that lurked in the corners of his mind, beneath the threads of unresolved trauma, hoping that inspiration would find him if only he could expand his mind enough. There was a guy in Bed Stuy who sold Jughead thin plastic straws of Jingle Jangle; he couldn’t help but laugh at the fact, a hometown drug in a big-time city. At first it was the JJ, then little bits of Adderall which he would proceed to crush up and snort as he waited for the next outbound train to anywhere. Day and night he would walk around like an opiated vampire, dedicated to the cause of inspiration, looking for the next check he could use for his next fix. 

_Jughead always said he would never end up like his father._ But pretty soon drinking to silence the voices turned into snorting coke off of grimy bathrooms sinks just so he didn’t have to be alone in his own head. Veronica told him that it was just his “Sophomore Slump,” that even the greats had a difficult time meeting the expectations of their readers. She was hiding the fact that she couldn’t even recognize him anymore. His hair was greasy and matted up under his beanie, cheeks gaunt from the stimulants that stole his appetite, lifeless cerulean eyes sunken in from the countless hours of sleep he had missed out on. Malachai was on speed dial no, but he was writing and that was all that seemed to matter. 

“I’m fine, JB, I promise. My agent’s just getting on my case about the book, _I’m sorry_ ” He missed his sister’s high school graduation, the girl had worked her ass off to keep a 4.0, while staying on the varsity soccer team for all four years of high school and earning a full ride to Stanford. “It’s almost done, and then I’m gonna come and see you, okay?” Jughead hears his sister sigh on the other end, too used to neglect from the Jones family. 

“Write about me sometime, okay Jug?” Jellybean asks, not waiting for her brother to respond before hanging up the phone. He laughs humorlessly as he stares at his cracked, blank screen. 

—

Seven hundred pages of drug-fuel ramblings. Abject paranoia. He was writing about what he knew: A spent young man searching for purpose in all the wrong places, running away from the faces of his past. He tosses the type-written manuscript onto Veronica’s desk two months before he turns twenty-two. “You’re barely hanging on by a gossamer thread, _Forsythe,_ are you even going to make it to publishing day?” Veronica picks up her horn-rimmed glasses from their spot on her desk and begins to skim over the pages on front of her. 

“Semi-autobiographical?” Veronica questions before shutting her mouth, not wanting to know more than necessary. 

“Something like that,” Jughead trails off, focusing his gaze out the window to avoid the curious expression of his literary agent. The two had grown to have a tumultuous friendship, but a friendship nonetheless. He can tell that Veronica is worried about him, but hell, he was worried about himself too. _To write like the greats, you had to be like the greats,_ or at least that’s what he used to tell himself. He can feel himself slipping into madness, into greatness, into something he didn’t know if he could handle. His meeting with Veronica continues as usual, she would hand over the manuscript to the editors soon and they would be one step closer to publishing day. 

As he begins his jaunt out of Veronica’s office, he’s called back, turning on the worn heels of his tennis shoes, “You didn’t give it a title, Jones”. Jughead hadn’t thought of that, surprisingly. But he said the first word that came to mind, a word that encompassed how he felt about himself and the Big City and his small town.

“Wasteland. It’s called Wasteland” It fit as soon as he said it. Veronica nods curtly and grabs a post-it note, traces the letters in her careful scrawl before smoothing the yellow sticky note across the cover page of the manuscript. Jughead gives the ardent brunette a two-finger salute as he walks out the door, taking the stairs instead of the elevator. The late August air is warm on his oily face, he finds himself reaching to rip off his beanie and roll up the sleeves of his shirt. Part of him is itching to call up Malachai to get his next fix… _but he doesn’t._

Instead, he walks down a few blocks, eyes a coffee shop that doesn’t look too busy, and walks through the doors, comforted by the chime of a bell that reminded him of better days. He rounds the counter to be greeted by one of the prettiest girls Jughead thinks he’s ever seen. She’s petite, with long honey-blonde hair that was slicked back into a careful ponytail, kind green eyes and pink lips twisted into a welcoming smile. 

“What can I get for you today?” The girl asks politely and Jughead finds himself searching for a name-tag pinned somewhere on her black apron. _Betty_. It rolls off the tongue easily, sounds like the name of a novel’s protagonist, strong, smart, and simple. He orders an iced coffee and tucks himself into a corner booth, where he takes a notebook and a pen out of his satchel, and lets the words flow freely, for the first time in a long time. 


End file.
